Getting tired of listening to the same darn things over and over on your iPod? Or maybe you are bored of an entire music genre? Based on the current music industry trends, you may be. 

Enter Pomplamoose: a one-woman, one-man band boasting a plethora of intriguing musical talent. Found on YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace as “Pomplamoose”, this band is comprised of the lovely Natalie Dawn and groovy Jack Conte, who both reside in the San Francisco area. What makes their music so fresh and fun is the fact that it’s an entirely new genre of music, what they have dubbed as the “VideoSong”.

What makes this different from a music video? Dawn and Conte have established a few rules on what constitutes a VideoSong: What you see is what you hear (No lip-syncing for instruments or voice), and if you hear something, you will see what made the sound at some point in the video (no hidden sounds). And that is another thing that sets Dawn and Conte apart from other musicians; they create their music on their own without the assistance from any big music label, and every instrument or sound you hear is produced by the duo.

That means that every instrument they use from the guitar, the piano, the drums and the sounds from their voices or clapping, are all their own work and mixed for your listening and viewing pleasure. One of their videos even has an accordion!

Individually, they are brilliant. Natalie is very calm and folksy while Jack borrows some similarities from the likes of Radiohead and Incubus. They both have their own individual YouTube channels which stand out from the crowd , but the real party is them working together in the form of Pomplamoose, as any of their fans (myself included) will tell you. Their music is mostly from their own creative genius, but they also do mix-ups of other classics like “Nature Boy”, “All the Single Ladies,” and “Beat It”.

They have their own album on iTunes (music version only), but if you want to have some good fun on YouTube, then check out their channel and watch for yourself.  Their VideoSongs are free!

Check out their YouTube page HERE.

Evolution of YouTube

Companies always try to make things better, and in the case of YouTube, things are constantly changing, for the better.

One of the original video aesthetics, circa 2007.

Newer video aesthetics, circa 2008

Current design, November 2010

Using High ISO

Above: Flash looses detail and blinds the subject, in this case my dog, Buddy. Below: 10 seconds later, I used a much higher ISO, which in this case made the photo much brighter and added significantly more detail. Cool, huh?

If your camera has a feature called "High ISO" then you should use it. Because I said so. :) I don't know what it means, but honestly, it works like magic, so you don't really need to know what it stands for. 

ISO is essentially a way a camera takes a picture by keeping the lens open for longer than normal. More ISO = more light, which makes it ideal in low-light situations. It is particularly useful to use during dawn and dusk hours, where using a flash would not be optimal. 

Check out my examples below:

Using higher ISO isn't always optimal, but use it as much as possible for better looking photos!

WEEKEND CULTURAL ENRICHMENT #4: "Halloween Weekend"

Happy Halloween people!

This weekend's culture enrichment is obvious, is it not? In honor of the holiday and it's spooky traditions, that's what this update is all about!

Halloween shares its origins with Celtic festivities and an old Christian holiday 'All Saints Day.' The name comes from a Scottish variant of 'All-hallows-eve' which was the night before 'All-hallows-day' which was believed to be the time of year where the veil between our world and the spirit world was thinnest.

If you want more info on the origins of halloween, look it up.

As far as media is concerned, when it comes to halloween, you want to be so scared out of your pants that you can't pee anymore. Why? Because we love the adrenaline rush that comes with being scared and it's HALLOWEEN!

game:
dead space

movie:
exorcism (see ign's top scary movie list)

Book:
Inspired by the classic children's book 'The Jungle Book,' 'The Graveyard Book' is a perfect quick read for this weekend. Scary? No. This story is about a Kid who's parents get killed by a murderer and ends up being adopted by some ghosts in a graveyard. Awesome? Very much so!! Even though it's a child's fantasy novel, it is one of my favorites, and gives interesting perspective to growing up, the afterlife, super powers, and anything that crawls in the night, and not specifically in that order.

Read it. Go now.
NY Times review.

Song:
The Ghost Busters' theme song. Need I say more?

Music video:
Basically the most iconic music video of all time, sparking major world-wide intrigue and causing a generation of amazingness, this video is with out a single shadow of a doubt the best thing you will ever experience as far as pop-culture '80's songs go:

Michael Jackson's Thriller! Watch the video HERE.
More Info.